Manx Gaelic (Gaelg) is the native language of the Isle of Man (Ellan Vannin), a self-governing Crown Dependency in the Irish Sea located between Britain and Ireland. It is a Gaelic language related to Irish (Gaeilge) and Scots Gaelic (Gàidhlig) but with its own orthography closer to English style spelling. The last few years have seen a remarkable increase in interest in the Manx language. Digitised Scripture resources have been produced by the Bible Society with language support from Yn Çheshaght Ghailckagh (the Manx Language Society) and Culture Vannin, to help the growing number of Manx speakers engage with the Bible.

Manx Apocrypha 1772

The Manx New Testament was first published in 1767. The books of the Wisdom of Solomon (Creenaght Solomon) and the Wisdom of Jesus son of Sirach (Creenaght Yeesey Mac Sirach) or Ecclesiasticus from the Apocrypha were published by the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge (SPCK) with the Manx Old Testament in 1772. Other parts of the Old Testament Apocrypha which were translated from the English King James Version of the Bible were the five books of Tobit, Judith, Baruch (including the Letter of Jeremiah as chapter 6), Susanna and Bel (which are two additions to the book of Daniel). These books were most likely translated because they all include readings which are part of the Anglican lectionary. However these books were unpublished and remained in manuscript form, which has not survived, but a copy was made by the Manx scholar William Sayle of Larivane in about 1840. Sayle's copy is in the Manx Museum as manuscript MS. 1236A, in the William Sayle Collection.

Five Stories from the Old Testament Apocrypha 1979

In 1978 Dr George Broderick, a Celtic languages scholar, came across this Sayle manuscript and he edited and corrected it. Letters, words and phrases in the Apocrypha which were missing in the manuscript, either by the translator or the transcriber, were translated in the same style and were added within square brackets. The final work was published as "Five Stories from the Old Testament Apocrypha in Manx Gaelic" by Yn Cheshaght Ghailckagh (The Manx Gaelic Society) in 1979.

Digital Edition

These five additional books from the Apocrypha were digitised in 2017, with the help of MissionAssist. They were keyboarded to mark the 250th anniversary of the first Manx New Testament.